


I Wish I May, I Wish I Might

by StormLeviosa



Series: Batman Bingo 2020 fics [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, Robin (Comics)
Genre: Bad Parents Jack and Janet Drake, Batfamily (DCU), Batfamily (DCU) Fluff, Brotherly Bonding, Child Neglect, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Eventual Happy Ending, Families of Choice, Family Feels, Gen, Stalker Tim Drake, Tim Drake Needs a Hug, Tim Drake-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-04
Updated: 2020-04-04
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:54:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,339
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23478808
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StormLeviosa/pseuds/StormLeviosa
Summary: Tim Drake wishes for a lot of things. One of those things is a familyHe gets one... eventually
Series: Batman Bingo 2020 fics [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1625461
Comments: 8
Kudos: 259





	I Wish I May, I Wish I Might

**Author's Note:**

> Originally this was going to be a kind of flashback/interlude for 'Sticks and Stones' but then I realised it fitted better on its own so now you get another one-shot and I get to tick another box on my bingo square.

When Tim is very small, he stands at the porch and watches his parents leave for Zanzibar or Fiji or Belize or Kosovo or Mongolia or wherever it is they’re going next. They’re gone 335 days each year, Tim checked. He watches as their car disappears behind the gates and goes back inside. In winter, he plays make-believe games by himself, pretending he’s Sherlock Holmes solving a case (he ignores the conspicuous absence of a Dr Watson) or Robin taking down the villains (Tim’s Robin doesn’t need a Batman to keep him safe). In summer, he runs out to the garden and watches Bruce Wayne watch Dick Grayson practice acrobatics on the lawn. He climbs the oak tree and if he shimmies along the thickest branch a little way and leans out just so, he can see all the way to their patio where the butler, Mr Pennyworth, lays out homemade lemonade and cucumber sandwiches. Watching them from his secret spot, Tim forgets his own food and drink, forgets his own games. Mrs Mac calls for him as the sun begins to think about setting and he stumbles as he hits the dirt, low blood sugar and dehydration giving him a floaty, fuzzy feeling like his head isn’t connected to his body. She asks if he had fun playing outside and he grins widely when he tells her yes. She will never know that he wasn’t playing at all.

When Tim is very small, and his parents are home for once, he goes to the circus. Dick Grayson, youngest of the world-famous Flying Graysons, beams and gives him a hug that Tim will remember for the rest of his life, warm and solid and full of love for this kid he doesn’t even know yet (he will. One day, Dick Grayson will call Tim ‘brother’ and it will be more honest than anything he’s ever told him.) His parents take their picture before they take their seats. It is Tim’s prized possession for the next decade and a bit. The night is a disaster ending in blood and cracked bones and tears, but Tim knows somewhere inside him that tonight is important; tonight has changed the course of history.

When Tim’s parents aren’t home, and Mrs Mac has gone home for the night, Tim sneaks into the city with a camera his parents bought him for a Christmas they missed in favor of Morocco and a bike they bought him for a birthday they missed in favor of Tallinn that he learned to ride while they were in Tuvalu. He has a police scanner on his phone, follows anything related to Batman and Robin on social media, has a map plotted with the best stake out spots. The city is cold at night, even in summer, and he shivers slightly in his hoodie as the sweat from cycling dries against his skin. It’s better in summer than winter; in winter he has to grapple with his camera through thick gloves that he sewed to his jacket after losing them for the sixth time in a month. He checks his phone and sees there’s a robbery at the general bank and Batman’s on the scene. It’s only a few blocks over, so he scrambles down from his perch on the fire escape and runs in the bank's direction. He gets up onto the balcony of the hotel opposite just in time to see Robin chase a runaway robber out. They’re running in Tim’s direction. He readies his camera. Robin launches off the wall, tucks himself up and turns once, twice, three times… four. He delivers a flying kick to the guy’s head and he drops like a stone in a pond. Robin ties him up. Tim watches and tries to ignore his brain making connections it definitely shouldn’t be making. 

Dick Grayson leaves Gotham when he’s eighteen and Tim’s almost eleven (he’s ten years, six months and two days old, that counts as almost eleven because it’s closer to eleven than ten). They have never met. Tim keeps his secret anyway. 

When Tim is small, he doesn’t watch his parents leave. They mostly leave in the early morning and he stays up late playing video games with his school friends so he doesn’t get up in time. That’s what they think, anyway. When he wakes up, he takes his toast outside and climbs the tree in the garden. The thickest branches are still strong enough to hold him, and if he leans out just so he can see all the way out to the patio where Mr Pennyworth lays out homemade lemonade and stacks of sandwiches. Bruce Wayne plays catch with Jason Todd, plays tag, plays hide and seek. Tim is self-aware enough to know this is creepy. He knows he’s jealous, and he knows it’s weird to watch your neighbors over the fence. He watches anyway because all his friends are busy with their families and Mrs Mac doesn’t care for children underfoot. He has nothing else to do. He watches the dog come barreling out of the manor and feels his heart clench. He’d always wanted a dog.

His parents are home when Robin dies. They don’t know Robin is dead, only that Jason Todd is, but Tim knows. Tim knows because Tim has kept their secret since he was tiny and watching Dick Grayson do a quadruple somersault to catch a crook. Jason Todd is dead and Bruce Wayne is grieving. Robin is dead and Batman is going insane. The Joker is locked up tight in Arkham, for all the good it’ll do, and there hasn’t been a breakout since Poison Ivy got put away a month ago. They’re due one. Tim hopes the Joker doesn’t get loose, knows it’s a lost cause. His parents ask him about his grades and are pleased that they are good. They go to parent consultation evening for the first time and his teachers praise him for being a good, if quiet, student. Tim thinks maybe they will stay this time. A week passes. They go to the theater, the museum, the zoo. Things are good. Then they leave again and Tim goes back to watching Batman come ever closer to breaking his first and final rule.

Tim is the replacement Robin, the stand-in. He trains and trains and trains, works with the best of the best, learns everything he can from everyone except Batman because Batman won’t teach him. It’s fine. It’s understandable really after what happened to Jason, to the real Robin. But he makes a place for himself in this weird world of vigilantism and it’s a good place to be; he’s making a difference in ways he’d never imagined. Even if he’s just a replacement for the Robin that came before and a stand-in for the one that will come after, he’s glad to be here while he can be. He train-surfs with Dick while blindfolded, and it’s the most fun he’s ever had. He spends the odd weekend with Dicks old Titans and makes friends for life. He forgets he has a life outside being Robin sometimes, except when he goes home at the end of every night.

Jason Todd comes back from the dead and everything falls apart very briefly before knitting back together like nothing happened. He tracks down Tim, who had been shunted off to the Titans for the weekend (he should have been suspicious, should have known), and leaves him for dead. Tim wasn’t quick enough, wasn’t strong enough, and he suffers for it. He doesn’t think Jason meant to make him suffer, not really. He’s bitter, sure, because Tim’s his replacement and Bruce made that god-awful memorial plaque telling them Jason was ‘a good soldier’ when Robin wasn’t a soldier to be flung into a war zone at all, but he’s not malicious. He wants Bruce to feel bad, not Tim. Tim feels bad anyway.

When Tim’s parents come home from Haiti, one is in a coffin and one is in a hospital. His dad may never walk again. That’s fine. His mom will never breathe or open her eyes or talk or smile or do any of the things living people do. Tim doesn’t know how to feel about that. Sometimes he wonders if he ever knew his mother at all, or if she was a stranger that just so happened to birth him and occasionally share a living space with him. The same is true of his dad, but at least his dad is still alive. Jack Drake comes home for his wife’s funeral and doesn’t leave again. He says Tim isn’t the son he knew, as if he ever knew Tim at all, even before he was Robin. He starts physio and Tim starts lying.

He gives Steph Robin because she deserves it. She’s spunky and fearless and smart and everything that Robin should be. He’s sneaky and sly and patient and everything he made Robin be. Tim doesn’t regret it. Much. When he spends time with his dad instead of Bruce, when he goes to the arcade with Ives and Bernard instead of straight to the cave for training after school, when he does homework late at night instead of casework, he doesn’t stop to think about the feel of a bo staff in his hand or the tug of a grappling hook. In the moments in between, he misses the purpose Robin gave him and the home he’d made with people who knew him without the lies. 

Stephanie Brown dies. Tim is Robin again and his dad knows and it feels wonderful in that aching, grieving way that wonders whether someone has to die for Tim to be happy and if he’s willing to let that stand.

Jack Drake dies. Tim has spent long enough being lonely, is so used to not having parental supervision despite this last (mostly) wonderful year, that he makes up an uncle so things can go back to normal. It works for a while. 

Bruce finds out and he’s not happy about Tim lying to him (Tim lied to Batman and how many people can say _that_?) It’s kind of a big deal but they’re both uncertain about emotions so they don’t talk about it. Robin feels tainted now, like Tim can’t fly to rescue someone without someone else falling. Bruce tries to comfort him but Bruce isn’t good with emotions and he’s even worse with words sometimes. Tim doesn’t even know how to feel. The adoption gets finalized and Tim is officially Bruce’s son, but it’s not the beautiful summer’s day Tim had dreamed of. In fact, it’s rather grey. In summer they play catch on the lawn but Tim doesn’t know how to be that kind of son, doesn’t know how not to be the child that gets picked up and put away when the parents are done playing with him. He finally gets to try Mr Pennyworth’s sandwiches and homemade lemonade but he thinks his cookies and hot cocoa are better, prefers iced tea and fresh fruit on a hot day. He doesn’t want to take advantage of the Waynes. They are kind and generous and Tim’s dreamed of belonging to them all his life, but now he’s here he feels like he shouldn’t be. He still feels like the stand-in son, like one day he’ll wake up in his old bed all alone and it’ll all have been a dream.

It gets better, slowly. He becomes used to being Bruce’s son, to living in the manor, and Bruce becomes used to Tim’s little quirks and idiosyncrasies. Bruce knows that Tim doesn’t need looking after or coddling, and Tim knows Bruce just wants to check and make sure he’s happy. They learn each other so they don’t have to talk to know what the other is feeling. It makes the emotion stuff easier. Sometimes Bruce even knows what Tim’s thinking before Tim does, and vice versa. Tim learns all the ways Alfred is not like Mrs Mac starting with how he won’t hit Tim with a wooden spoon for getting in the way but heaven forbid he bring Robin business upstairs. Dick comes home on weekends now, and joint patrol is the highlight of all their weeks. He and Dick try to introduce Bruce to social media and fail miserably. Alfred takes to it like a duck to water. Jason lurks at the edges of their group, not quite daring to reach out. Tim doesn’t quite dare either. There seems to be a tentative peace between all of them and he’d rather it stay that way than wade in and ruin it for everyone. He knows dimly that this is but a brief interlude before everything falls apart again - this is Gotham, after all - but that doesn’t mean he can’t enjoy it while it lasts.

When Tim was very small his parents left him alone in a house too big for a little boy while they fulfilled their dreams (and avoided the taxes they’d have to pay if they stayed for longer than thirty days). Sometimes, when he was a bit bigger and Mrs Mac didn’t come by every day, he’d go days or even weeks without seeing a soul except for Bruce Wayne and his son over the garden wall in the summer. He grew up like this: watching other people and dreaming of having what they did. It was selfish of him, perhaps, not to appreciate all he had; money is hard to come by nowadays and his parents had it in spades. He had never wanted for anything except attention, except love, except those intangible nebulous things that he could technically live without. His childhood was a happy one, a lonely one, but a better one than most children would get. Tim had been lucky. He’d dreamed big and got it. His dad would be proud. And as he saves his last case report, thinking about the past, Tim thinks maybe he’s proud too.

**Author's Note:**

> Quarantine is killing me. I've had enough. I want to go back to uni so maybe I'll actually be motivated to do my assignments and I can avoid my parents.
> 
> Hope you guys are doing better than me 😂. Let me know what you think in the comments (or leave a kudos if you're shy. I treasure anything people will give me)


End file.
